(Local
action in Fayetteville, Arkansas: Toward stopping Iran war and imperialism, we
are currently holding weekly peace protests every Saturday at 11 A.M. in front
of Washington County Courthouse. Please join us.If temp. in 90s drink water before, during,
and after.)

Analysis of NADG Reporting of US Aggression Against Iran July 19-23, with
assistance from Inside Iran by Medea
Benjamin

D-G Staff.“US.
Warship in Gulf Downs Iranian Drone.Trump Calls U.S. Response –Self-Defense.”NADG
(7-19-19). [ Imagine an Iranian warship in Tampa Bay shooting down a US
surveillance drone.Imagine too the
warship was an amphibious assault
vessel like the USS Boxer.And imagine
the ship was accompanied outside the Bay by the full complement of a Carrier
Strike Force (like the one led by the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln presently in
the Arabian Sea).Now can you imagine
US Central Command not sending out a
surveillance drone?And imagine Iranian
news media describing the incident as part of the US “raising tensions” by
threatening Iranian forces and interests in the Gulf of Mexico.And throw in imagining four Iranian B-52
long-range bombers and Patriot air defense missiles to Cuba and Venezuela.And, no imagining now, remember how close to
violent war the two nations came when on June 20, Trump ordered a retaliatory
military strike in retaliation for Iran shooting down a US Navy drone, but
called it off at the last moment.The
authors of the report, the D-G Staff, do not imagine how all of this might look
to the Iranians.]

D-G Staff.“Iran Claims to Seize Now-silent U.K.
Ship.Incident Adds to Tensions in
Persian Gulf”7-20-19.[During the 19th c., Russia,
Britain, and France were rivals in taking over various Iranian resources.“…one with monumental consequences, came in
1901, when Iranian rulers signed over the exclusive rights to drill for oil” to
a British businessman….the first step in what became the U.K. takeover of
Iran’s oil resources.”From this time
forward, dislike of “foreign concessions” and of Iran’s rulers’ failure to
defend the nation’s sovereignty grew among the populace.Medea Benjamin, Inside Iran (2018).]

Stan Choe and Damian Troise (AP).“Iran Tensions, Fed Rate Worries Send Stocks
Lower.”7-20-19.2D.[
“Iran Tensions” is a common US mainstream media (MM) coverup of the causation
agency chain.The “tensions” didn’t just
appear, but began when the US/CIA overthrew the democratically elected Iranian
government under Mossadegh.A tit for
tat relationship ensued, which was reinforced when Pres. Trump arbitrarily and
unilaterally canceled the nuclear agreement between the countries.More recently, the UK seized an Iranian
vessel, the US shot down an Iranian drone, and the Iranians seized a British
and a Liberian vessel.]

D-G Staff.“Britain Puts Iran on Notice.”7-21-19.

The 3rd paragraph includes two important
reminders: in June the US came “to
within minutes of a military strike against targets in Iran,” and “a fifth
of the world’s crude oil supply is shipped from the Persian Gulf through the
Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran.”Tough talk from Britain regarding “further measures”—a freeze on Iranian
assets, pushing the EU and UN to reimpose sanctions.”Britain’s Foreign Secretary also defended “British-assisted”
seizure of Iran’s supertanker earlier this month as “legal” because vessel
suspected of breaching EU sanctions on oil shipments to Syria.In contrast, Iran’s Foreign Minister labeled
the seizure “piracy,” and its Guardian Council justified its seizure of a
British tanker as “reciprocal action.”Other Iranian agencies explained the seizure differently, which we have
seen before resulting from the three main sources of power in Iran.Trump, France, Germany sided with
Britain.“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said…that the U.S. isn’t willing to talk with Iran until it acts like a normal
country.”[This statement seems so
hypocritical or ignorant, given US’s own history, that one wonders if Pompeo even
attended high school, though of course the true history of imperial US in the
Middle East is not taught there.]Pompeo
also said “Iran has shown ‘no signs’ it wants to change direction on its
nuclear and missile programs.”[Maybe he
suffers from short-term memory loss.Iran did change direction under the deal signed under the Obama
administration by accepting strict, verifiable limits on its uranium enrichment
program.]To add to the extremely heavy
force being gathered surrounding Iran [the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, etc.],
“the U.S. Central command” began “putting in place ‘a multinational maritime
effort’ called OperationSentinel that
would ‘increase surveillance of and security in key waterways in the Middle
East to ensure freedomof navigation in
light of recent events in the Arabian Gulf region” [British marines seizing the
Iran tanker at Gibraltar July 4?!).

Robert Burns (AP).“Wary of Iran, U.S. Dusting Off 1990s Saudi base, Shoring Up
Defenses.”7-21-19.More quotations followed by comment.[The first is the term “defenses.”Iran is on the defense, not the US, which has
surrounded Iran with a dozen military bases and nuclear armed submarines and
planes, enabling the US to have already programmed for annihilation all of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard’s bases.One of the
best acts for peace for all of us would be the total replacement of the word “defense,”
repeated endlessly in the official Orwellian vocabulary of war, and its replacement by the word offense.

“Tensions with
Iran have spiked since May when President Donald Trump’s
administration said it had detected increased Iranian preparations for possible
attacks on U.S. forces and interests in the Persian Gulf area. . . .This
movement of forces provides an additional deterrent, and ensures our ability to
defend our forces and interests in the region (translation:oil) from emergent credible threats,’ Central
Command said.““With Iranian military threats in mind, the
United States is sending American forces” to a Saudi air base—al-Kharj, now the
Prince Sultan air base-- that was a hub of US air power in the ME in the 1990s.[It was this US presence in SA that caused SA
citizen bin Laden to hate the US and to mastermind flying US planes into the
Trade Towers in 2001.][George Orwell
would have enjoyed citing much of this report on the massive US armed squeeze
of Iran presented as defense: war is peace.]

D-G Staff.“In
Recording, U.K. Warship Urges Iran to Let Tanker Go.”7-22-19.
Details of the seizure, some historical events leading to the seizure, and
“U.K. Response” are crowded into this report derived from AP, Bloomberg News,
and NYT sources.Benjamin in chapter 1
of Inside Iran recounts the long
struggle by the Iranian people to regain Iranian sovereignty.A momentous episode in this history is the
coup that overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 engineered by the CIA and UK spy agency
M16. Mossadegh’s National Front Party
had created the National Iranian Oil Company to negotiate with the British to
purchase the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (precursor to BP).When the British refused, Mossadegh
nationalized the company. (A big deal;
the British had profited by hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and the British
Navy depended on Iran’s oil for 85 percent of its fuel.)The larger issue was control of Iran’s oil by
Western powers.In June of 1953, US
Secretary of State John foster Dulles unveiled the plot to overthrow
Mossadegh.The actual British and US
arranged coup occurred on August 19 when a mob paid for the by the US took over
the streets and Sherman tanks surrounded key buildings.

“Relations
between Iran and the United States were permanently damaged, as the U.S.
government was now seen as yet another duplicitous power, in cahoots with the perfidious
British who had constrained and thwarted Iran’s independence and sovereignty
for 150 years.

By contrast,
Mohammad Mossadegh is remembered by his people as a national leader in the mold
of India’s Gandhi….”)(p. 27).

Given such a
history, not the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guard, nor the Parliament
and Prime Minister were prepared to listen to any UK warship.

D-G Staff.“Britain
Seeking Mission in Gulf.Goal to Protect
Ships from Iran.”7-23-19, 1A. 2A. Let’s see it from the other side’s
pov.

Middle Eastern
governments plan to develop and deploy a “maritime protection mission” to
safe-guard shipping in the Gulf of Mexico following US seizure of an
Iranian-flagged tanker as it approached the Port of Texas City, a major deepwater port
at Galveston Bay.Its
location on the bay, which is used by the Port of Houston and
the Port of Galveston, puts Texas City in the heart of one of the
world's most important shipping hubs.

Briefing Iran’s
Parliament, Iran’s President accused the US of “’an act of state piracy’ that
must be met with a coordinated international reaction.”The US Secretary of the Department of War suggested
the Iranian New Century was seized and taken to the Port of Galveston in
response to Iran’s role in seizing a US oil tanker, the Deep Driller, in the
Gulf of Ormuz.Iran’s President
countered that under international law, the US had no right to stop the Deep
Driller or to board it.The President
said Iran’s allies will play a major role in keeping shipping lanes open, for
one-fifth of all global crude exports pass through the Gulf of Mexico from both
US and Mexican ports. . . .[I have
barely begun.Will one of you satirists
carry on?]

D-G Staff.“Iran Claims 17 Arrests of Spies Linked to
U.S.”7-23-19.1A, 2A.Quotations followed by my comments:“Iran said”:[Media around the world far too frequently
over-generalizes, making agency difficult to impossible to identify.Let’s remember that Iran has 3 tiers of gov:
at the top religion, the Supreme Leader and Guardian Council; under the Supreme
Leader the military Revolutionary Guard; below the Supreme Leader the
government bureaucracy performing all aspects familiar to gov responsibility,
with a parliament (Iranian National Assembly) and a prime minister (recently I
noticed that the government and the guard each had its own navy).Any time an article says that “a nation”
said something, I register the writer’s obfuscating laziness.]

After labeling
the accusation of spying “’another lie’ from Iran,” Pres. Trump added “that his
interest in negotiating with the country is waning.”[I expect that anyone who is reading this
newsletter would reply that it’s incomprehensible for Trump to repudiate the
lengthily negotiated treaty between the US/Pres. Obama and the gov of Iran and
then to declare his interest in negotiating “is waning.”]

Trump…called
the Iranian claim about the spies ‘totally false.’”[But why should we believe such an
accusation, when Trump has been repeatedly exposed as a pathological liar?(Google Donald
Trump liar lies to find an “avalanche of lies”.)]And he supported his accusation by describing
Iran as “’a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to
do.’” [But how do these derogations support the accusations?And who caused it to be “Badly Failing”?(See Inside
Iran, chapter 7, “The Iranian Economy After Decades of Sanctions.”) ]

Trump also said
he was waiting for “Tehran” “to agree to negotiate new limits on its nuclear
program and other activities.”[By
“new” we must assume he meant more
restrictive (or why would he have blamed Pres. Obama for allowing the
“disastrous” 2015 nuclear accord?), yet the accord restricted Iran to enriching
its uranium to below 4% (far from weapons grade) and to a stockpile of 661,both of which limits the UN Inspection Commission has
repeatedly verified were performed and maintained.

I have covered
Trump’s questionable comments in the first 14 paragraphs in a sizeable report
of 39.Will one of you take over?]

Suddenly on the
24th the NADG stopped
reporting on the Iran War, so I will break off too.

Criticism of US Global
Aggression

Contents:

Iran’s right to have a
nuclear energy program.

The US invasion of
Afghanistan brought not peace but death and starvation.

The
U.S. objection to Iran is not based on international law, but merely based on
its political objectives. This is clearly illustrated by open U.S. support for
nuclear energy and nuclear weapon development in India; and nuclear weapon
stockpiling in Israel, which the U.S. has always fully backed.

The war on Afghanistan has been ugly. Death is one
consequence of war—2019 has been the deadliest year for civilians since the
United States first began to bomb Afghanistan in 2001. Starvation is
another—according to the UN, half of the population will need food assistance
over the course of this year.Source

Base Nation: How U.S. Military
Bases Abroad Harm America and the World by David Vine.

From Italy to the Indian Ocean, from Japan to Honduras, a
far-reaching examination of the perils of American military bases overseas

American military bases encircle the globe. More than two
decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. still stations its troops at
nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for
granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon’s vast
operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows
that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills—and
actually makes the nation less safe in the long run.

As David Vine
demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke
widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American
democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators and
perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories like Guam.
They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local
economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon
underplays the numbers, Vine’s accounting proves that the bill approaches $100
billion per year.

U.S. MILITARY BASES ABROAD, 2015

As of 2015, the United
States controlled approximately 800 bases outside the fifty U.S. states and
Washington, D.C. The sheer number of bases as well as the secrecy and lack of
transparency of the overseas base network make any graphic depiction
challenging.

“U.S. national security
policy rests on the assertion that 'forward presence' contributes directly to
global peace and security. In this powerful book, David Vine examines,
dismantles, and disproves that claim. He demonstrates that America's sprawling
network of overseas bases imposes costs—not only financial but also political,
environmental, and moral—that far exceed what the Pentagon is prepared to
acknowledge. Base Nation offers a
devastating critique, and no doubt Washington will try to ignore it. Citizens
should refuse to let that happen.”

“I
spent 33 years (in the) Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from
Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I (was) a high
class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street… I was a racketeer, a
gangster for capitalism...I helped make Mexico (safe) for American oil interests in
1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank
boys…I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefits of Wall Street….I helped purify Nicaragua for (Brown Brothers banking)
in 1909-1912…I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar
interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its
way unmolested.”

Fast
forward to recent history, and see the U.S. empire has grown to over 800 foreign military bases in over
80 nations, and has neared total world domination. Most governments,
whether democracy or dictatorship, have become subservient to U.S.-enforced
corporate imperialist interests. When a given government stands up too
strongly, like nationalizing key resources,
that is the cue for regime change.

On
national television, Lesley Stahl interviewed Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright about these sanctions. Stahl asked, “We have heard that a half million
children have died…that’s more children than died in Hiroshima…is the price
worth it?” Albright calmly replied, “We think the price is worth it.” Her statement
displays an utter lack of conscience, and brings to mind a choice psychological
term.

Since
Iraq, imperialist coups or attempted coups have been waged on several more
nations, including Libya, Honduras, Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, etc. The most
catastrophic coup du jour on the menu is Iran. General
Anthony Zinni warned, “If you liked Iraq…you will love
Iran.” The “best” case scenario is, like Iraq, killing another
million people and wasting trillions more. The worst case scenarios are
unspeakable.

We
must stop the lies and imperialism. Most people correctly see slavery was
deeply immoral, and we must now realize imperialism is equally evil. What is
imperialism but a love of money so extreme that it demands killing people?

(Local action in Fayetteville, Arkansas:
Toward stopping Iran war and imperialism, we are currently holding weekly peace
protests every Saturday at 11 A.M. in front of Washington County Courthouse.
Please join us.)

Bret Stephens. NYT. “The fiasco
that wasn’t”. 4-7-19.A FAIR article analyzes a Bret Stephens argument to “sink
Iran’s navy”:New York Times’Bret Stephens (6/14/19) contended, “If Iran won’t change its
behavior, we should sink its navy.” The word “behavior” telegraphs how Stephens
presents Iran is a nation of children that needs to be disciplined by its
masters in the civilized world. He writes that “allowing Iran to go unpunished isn’t an
option. What is appropriate is a new set of rules — with swift consequences if
Iran chooses to break them. The Trump administration ought to declare new rules
of engagement to allow the Navy to engage and destroy Iranian ships or fast
boats that harass or threaten any ship, military or commercial, operating in
international waters. If Tehran fails to comply, the US should threaten to sink
any Iranian naval ship that leaves port.If
after that Iran still fails to comply, we would be right to sink its navy, in
port or at sea. The world cannot tolerate freelance Somali pirates. Much less
should it tolerate a pirate state seeking to hold the global economy hostage
through multiplying acts of economic terrorism.”

In Stephens’
estimation, the US has the right to issue “a new set of rules” and, in the
event that Iran doesn’t “comply” with the US’s imperial fiats about the waters
off Iran’s shores, employ gunboat diplomacy to enforce them. Notice how quickly
he slides from “the US” in the first of these paragraphs to “the world” in the
second, as though these are one and the same. Interestingly, his definition of
“economic terrorism” seems only to include actions that Iran is accused of
taking but hasn’t been proven to have done, and not the full-scale destruction of the Iranian economy that the US has
embarked on in plain sight.

D-G staff.“Iranian bill labels US forces terrorists” 4-17-19.Well aren’t they?The headline should be? Iranian Bill
Recognizes US Terrorism.What would Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, Pence say if the Iranians had an
aircraft carrier attack group in the Gulf of Mexico? (Google search US carrier
attack force, and read about each of the ships.)Or if a U.S. cruiser in the Strait of Hormuz
shot down an Iranian civilian airliner and killed all 200-plus people on board,
as happened?See LTE from Reg Edwards at
end: thank you Reg..

Matthew Lee. AP. “US adds wiggle room to Iran Guard
pressure. 4-25-19.IG pressure?!Take a look at the graphic of Iran surrounded
by US military bases?And the US has
some 800 bases.

MAY

Nasser Karimi. AP. “Report: Iran to pull back from nuke
deal.” 5-3-19.Why shouldn’t they since the U.S.ripped it
up already?The other half of the nuke
deal was for the U.S. to lift its crippling sanctions, its economic warfare on
Iran.So Trump tears up the agreement,
increases sanctions, and denounces Iran for breaking the agreement.

From Medea Benjamin’s book
Inside Iran: “It’s a wonder that the Iranian economy functions as
well as it does, given the crippling restrictions it is been subjected to since
the time of the 1979 revolution.
Sanctions started with the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, when the Carter
administration banned Iranian oil imports, froze $12 billion in Iranian
government assets in the U.S., and imposed an embargo on travel to Iran….(In
1983) the Reagan administration, after the 1983 bombing of a US Marine compound
in Lebanon, blocked World Bank loans to Iran and later banned all US imports
from Iran.Starting in 1995, the
Clinton administration used sanctions (including a total trade and investment
embargo and pressured foreign companies from investing in Iran) to punish Iran
for links to groups it defined as terrorists—Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad.”

Lorne Cook. AP. “EU to Iran: Abide by nuclear pact.5-10-19.Iran did abide by the pact. The
US did not. Does
the EU tell the US to “abide by the nuclear pact”?And what pact is there to abide by?

Jon Gambrell. AP. “Iran suspected in ship sabotages.”
5-14-19.Suspected by whom?On what evidence?(I’m writing this 7-18-19.)What should that headline have said?

D-G Staff. “Talking down war talk”5-15-19

D-G Staff. “Lawmakers say fill us in on Iran” 5-17-19

D-G Staff. “Airlines told of flight risk in Iran region”
5-19-19.The flight risk warning is focused
on a risk from Iranian attack. Do we
need to fear them, or the US?Forgotten
or suppressed is the U.S. shooting down an Iranian civilian aircraft, Iran Air
flight 655, in 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew.This is paralleled by US warnings of nuclear
weapons possessed by other nations, when only the US has used them and
threatened to use them repeatedly.

D-G Staff. “Will fight if Iranians start war, Saudis say”
5-20-19.The Iranians are not starting a
war and have not threatened to start a war.But the US is engaged in an economic war against Iran and is threatening
a military war.We cannot gild the
Saudis’ misleading statement with the label of sophistry (enabled by the
newspaper’s headline) because it is not clever, plausible, or subtle. The denied facts require a second
exposure:The US has engaged in economic
warfare on Iran for a long time.It is
the US that is starting war.See Cohen
below on sanctions.

Richard Chapman LTE. “Actions speak loudly” 5-21-19

D-G Staff. “Iran boosts uranium production” 5-21-19.

D-G Staff. “Trump officials say US actions to deter
attacks” 5-22-19.The US is responding
in “defense”. See the FAIR analysis following in Part II.

Amir Vahdat. AP. “Iranian
sets blame for deal failure: For First Time, Ayatollah Criticizes President, Top Envoy on Pact.”5-23-19.

David Rising. AP. “German
to urge Iran to keep nuke deal” 5-24-19.What is not emphasized is that half of the
nuke deal is removing the US crippling economic
sanctions (economic warfare) on Iran that have been going on since 1979.Trump did not keep the nuke deal.The whole world knows it, except for a
minority of US populace bumfuzzled by their ideology and demagogue.See Dan Cohen below on sanctions

AP. “[UN] Watchdog group: Iran Complying with 2015 deal”.
5-25-19.MANY THANKS TO
THE UN, but I wish it had spoken earlier and repeatedly.Oh, perhaps it did, and was not
reported.Pres. Trump failed utterly to comply with the
agreement involving a half-dozen major powers by unilaterally withdrawing from
it, yet he is accusing Iran of not complying and uses this falsification to
increase even more the economic warfare of sanctions, which is the central
source of conflict.See Cho below.

John Gambrell. AP. “Bolton warns Iran of reprisals”
5-30-19.They forgot to mention that
Bolton is a verifiable war criminal.Title should read “War Criminal Warns Iran of another Illegal War of
Aggression.”(Ref.: The UN Charter and
subsequent writings about threatening war.THE U N CHARTER FORBIDS, EXCEPT AS AND WHEN
AUTHORIZED BY THE SECURITY COUNCIL,THE USE OF FORCE
AGAINST ANOTHER STATE, EXCEPT IN CASE OF DEFENSE AGAINST ARMED ASSAULT, AND THIS
OFFENSE VIOLATES A NORM PRESCRIBED BY OUR OWN CONSTITUTION.)

D-G Staff. “Saudi official calls for ‘force, firmness’
with Iran.” 5-31-19.As if American citizens should take Saudi
officials as rational, credible foreign policy advisors while they commit
genocidal war crimes in Yemen.What
should this headline say?Read the UN
Charter.

Robert Burns. AP. “US makes presence known to Iran.”
6-9-19.The US has Iran surrounded by wars
and military bases.Its presence is
constantly known. You have seen the cartoon of Iran, surrounded by US military
bases, asked why it had placed itself so close to them?

D-G Staff. “Iran did it, says Trump, ripping ‘nation of
terror.’” 6-15-19.Trump again accuses
Iran of attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, citing a video from US
Central Command ”purporting to show Iranian vessels retrieving an unexploded
[limpet]mine from one of the damaged ships.”But the co. that owns the tanker challenged the assertion saying it was
hit by a “flying object.”It’s a long
report (for the ADG) like many of them needing careful analysis.

D-G Staff. “Crew of attacked ship out of Iranian hands”
6-16-19.

D-G Staff. “Pompeo vows more proof Iran hit tankers.”
6-17-19.

D-G Staff.“Iran
to Top Uranium Limits; U.S. Ups Troops.”6-18-19.1A, 2A. Iran presented as a threat for moving from 4%
enriched uranium (for nuclear power) to 5%, when 90% is necessary for a bomb,
when it was the US president who broke the deal of Iran remaining below
4%.The United States Responds to the
threat.Follows pattern described in
FAIR article by Joshua Cho below of Iran being presented as an aggressive
threat and US responding, and not vice versa which is much more the case.[Alex Mironoff.LTE.“Need to Rest After That.”6-18-19.A part of the letter
defends Iran against Trump.]

D-G Staff.Cartoon
satirizing Gulf of Oman attack as similar to Gulf of Tonkin. 6-19-19.The cartoon related the Persian Gulf to the
Gulf of Tonkin, where mistakenidentification, poor judgement, and desire for war helped to trigger the
Vietnam War.

[On June 20, Iran shot down a US RQ-4 drone.]

D-G Staff.“Iran Reports It shot Down U.S. Drone in Its
Airspace.”6-20-19. 1A, 5A.A report
mainly about the bombing of the tanker ships.ADG also published a cartoon relating the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of
Tonkin, where mistaken identification, poor judgement, and desire for war
started the Vietnam War.

D-G Staff.“Trump Ok’d, Then Halted Iran [retaliatory]
Strikes: Reason for Canceled Plans Unknown.”6-21-19, 1A,5A.Read the final 3
essential paragraphs.There we learn
that Iran’s territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles, as does Oman’s across
the strait.Iran’s foreign affairs
minister “gave what he said were precise coordinates for where the U.S. drone
was targeted” near Kouh-e-Mobarak, and he said sections of the drone were
retrieved “in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.”Here is the ADG’s final paragraph: “The GPS
coordinates released by [minister Zarif] would put the drone 8 miles off Iran’s
coast, to inside the 12 nautical miles from shore that Iran claims as
territorial waters.”Apparently the
drone was shot down over Iranian territory, which explains why Trump canceled
the retaliatory strike.

D-G Staff. “Surprising News, More secrets exposed to
enemy. 6-21-19

DG Staff.“No Sign
of Iran Topping Uranium Stockpile Cap.”6-28-19. 8A.

JULY

D-G Staff. “Iran surpasses
deal’s uranium limit. 7-2-19.

[Art Hobson. “Another U.S.
war? Perhaps it’s time to slow down and think.” 7-2-19.]

D-G
Staff. “Iranian Video Issues Threat on Uranium. 7-7-19. Threat?Rather, more fear-mongering and war threatening by US and fecklessness
by European leaders, as Ali Akbar Velayati explains: “’Americans directly and
Europeans indirectly violated the deal.’European parties to the deal have yet to offer a way for Iran to avoid
the sweeping economic sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump since he
pulled the U.S. out of the accord a year ago, especially those targeting its
crucial oil sales.”Velayati continues
by explaining Iran’s intention to meet every US additional sanction by
enriching its uranium commensurately.“’We reduce our commitments as much as they reduce’” theirs. Remember the accord (the “deal”) arranged by
the Obama administration: Iran agreed 1) to enrich uranium to no more than 3.67%, which is enough for peaceful
pursuits but is far below weapons-grade levels of 90%; and 2) to limit its stockpile of uranium to 661 pounds.Trump trashed the agreement and increased
sanctions, so Iran began ratcheting up both, while appealing to Europeans to
restore the accord.Now read the scary
headline again.In contrast to the
headline, the full report gives Iran’s point of view.What is missing here, as it is absent
throughout this crisis reporting, is explanation of what is behind and
underneath Trump’s ferocious, vicious prejudice against Iran.For partial answers to this complex
historical and psychological question see the next section, but involved are 1)
his desire to dismantle all of Pres. Obama’s achievements, which seems both
personal and ideological, and 2) his commitment to Israel the nation and
Netanyahu the person.

D-G Staff. “Iran Discards Another Piece of Nuke Pact: Willing to
Talk, official Says as Enrichment Levels Raised.”” 7-8-19.Another report packed with crucial details, including plenty of
space for Netanyahu to repeat his conflation of Iran and Nazi Germany and his
perception of a quick leap from 3.67% uranium enrichment to 90%.

David
Rising.AP.“France Steps Up Diplomacy to Save Nuclear
Accord.”NADG (7-10-2019).

D-G
Staff.“Iranians Exercising…NADG
(7-11-19).

ADG Staff.“EU Tries to Rescue Iran Pact.Envoys Reluctant to Push Sanctions.”NADG
(7-16-19).Netanyahu’s fear mongering is
foregrounded—that the EU’s response to “Iranian violations” reminded him “of
the European appeasement of the 1930s.There are probably some in Europe who will not wake up until Iranian
missiles fall on European soil.”

D-G Staff.“US. Warship in Gulf Downs Iranian Drone.Trump Calls U.S. Response –Self-Defense.”NADG
(7-19-19).Imagine an Iranian warship in
Tampa Bay shooting down a US surveillance drone.Imagine too the warship was an amphibious assault vessel like the USS
Boxer.And imagine the ship was
accompanied outside the Bay by the full complement of a Carrier Strike Force
(like the one led by the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln presently in the Arabian
Sea).Now can you imagine US Central
Command not sending out a
surveillance drone?And imagine Iranian
news media describing the incident as part of the US “raising tensions” by
threatening Iranian forces and interests in the Gulf of Mexico.And throw in imagining four Iranian B-52
long-range bombers and Patriot air defense missiles to Cuba and Venezuela’.And, no imagining now, remember how close to violent
war the two nations came when on June 20, Trump ordered a retaliatory military
strike in retaliation for Iran shooting down a US Navy drone, but called it off
at the last moment. The authors of the
report, the D-G Staff, do not imagine how all of this might look to the
Iranians.

ANALYSES OF
MEDIA REPORTING IRAN

TWO ARTICLES
FROM FAIR AND A LTE

Shupak, US
mainstream media normalize imperial aggression and facilitate war by hyping a
threatening Iran.

Cho, US never breaks, breaches, or
violates its international agreements.

JULY 2, 2019

Creating a
Climate for War With Iran

Media outlets are creating a climate for a US military attack on
Iran by hyping the idea that Iran is an imminent threat to peace, by failing to
offer evidence that calls the US’s accusations against Iran into question, by
amplifying warmongers’ voices and by naturalizing America’s supposed right to
spy on every country on earth.

Headlines are breathlessly suggesting to readers that Iranians are
going to kill Americans if Americans don’t kill Iranians first.

A Hill article
(6/7/19) told readers “Why Congress Needs Accurate
Intelligence on the Iran Threat”; Fox (6/14/19) explained “The Trump Administration’s
Strategy to Meet Threat from Iran.” A New York Times article (6/17/19) by David E. Sanger called Iran one of the
“nuclear crises” facing the US, even though the International Atomic Energy
Agency has said that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and hasn’t been close
to having one since at least 2003, and there is reason to believe that it never has been close.

Presenting Iran
as a threat, nuclear or otherwise, over and over again carries the clear
message that it must be confronted. Yet it’s much more accurate to say that the
US is a threat to Iran than the opposite (FAIR.org, 6/6/19); after all, it’s the US government that is
destroying Iran’s economy through sanctions that limit Iranians’ access to food
and medicine, while surrounding Iran with military bases and land, sea and air
forces. Iran has done nothing remotely comparable to the US.

Media
outlets also create a climate for war when they fail to offer evidence that
contradicts US government narratives about Iran. Sanger’s supposedly neutral
piece of reporting in the Times (6/17/19) made three references to attacks on oil
tankers in the Gulf of Oman for which the US blames Iran, in one case implying
that readers should believe that Iran was responsible, writing:

Even the Democratic
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff, no
friend of Mr. Trump’s, says the evidence is overwhelming that Iran was
responsible for the attacks on the tankers.

Schiff may be “no
friend of Mr. Trump’s,” but that doesn’t necessarily make him a skeptic of
intelligence claims about official enemies; he voted to authorize force against
Iraq in 2002 on the basis of bogus intelligence claims that that country
possessed unauthorized weapons of mass destruction.

At no point did
the Sanger article mention the evidence that casts doubt on the claim that Iran
carried out the attacks—for instance, the owner of one of the tankers,
the Kokuka Courageous, said that it “was struck by a flying
projectile, contradicting reports by U.S. officials and the military” that a
mine was a source of the damage to the vessel.

Another
ostensibly objective Times report (6/20/19), this one on Trump’s apparent approval and
subsequent cancellation of a military attack after Iran shot down a US drone,
said that

United States officials
sought to bolster their case that Iran was responsible for last week’s tanker
attacks, telling journalists at a briefing that fragments recovered from one of
the tankers bore a “striking resemblance” to limpet mines used by Iran.

This account also
leaves out that, in addition to the statement from the owner of the Kokuka
Courageous, those aboard one of the other ships thought it was a torpedo that hit them.

The US has been worried
about international shipping through the strategic waterway since tankers were
damaged in May and June in what Washington has blamed on limpet mines from
Iran, although Tehran denied involvement. On Wednesday in the United Arab
Emirates, the US Navy showed fragments of mines that it said bore “a striking
resemblance” to those seen in Iran.

This article,
like the two from the Times, opted against noting the
above-mentioned flaws in the US’s account of the June tanker attacks, or
the strong political reasons for Iran to not carry
out these acts. Nor does the piece mention the shortage of evidence for US government
allegations that Iran damaged tankers in May.

Instead of
mentioning these elements of the story, the reports exclusively gave voice to
the US government’s version of events. Without the evidence that calls that
account into question, US/Iran relations are presented as a series of attacks
by Iran against the US and its partners—first oil tankers, and then a US
drone—which encourages people to see Iran as a violent aggressor that needs to
be dealt with violently. Providing readers with reasons to be skeptical about
US government claims that Iran is responsible for the tanker attacks both
undermines that master narrative, and can lead audiences to be suspicious about
all claims Washington is making about Iran.

More
directly, media outlets are creating a climate for war by giving megaphones to
right-wing ghouls explicitly calling for a US military attack on Iran.

A column by
the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/14/19) contended, “If Iran won’t change its
behavior, we should sink its navy.” The word “behavior” telegraphs how Stephens
presents Iran is a nation of children that needs to be disciplined by its
masters in the civilized world. He writes that “allowing Iran to go unpunished isn’t an
option. What is appropriate is a new set of rules — with swift consequences if
Iran chooses to break them. The Trump administration ought to declare new rules
of engagement to allow the Navy to engage and destroy Iranian ships or fast
boats that harass or threaten any ship, military or commercial, operating in
international waters. If Tehran fails to comply, the US should threaten to sink
any Iranian naval ship that leaves port.

If after that Iran still
fails to comply, we would be right to sink its navy, in port or at sea. The
world cannot tolerate freelance Somali pirates. Much less should it tolerate a
pirate state seeking to hold the global economy hostage through multiplying
acts of economic terrorism.”

In Stephens’
estimation, the US has the right to issue “a new set of rules” and, in the
event that Iran doesn’t “comply” with the US’s imperial fiats about the waters
off Iran’s shores, employ gunboat diplomacy to enforce them. Notice how quickly
he slides from “the US” in the first of these paragraphs to “the world” in the
second, as though these are one and the same. Interestingly, his definition of
“economic terrorism” seems only to include actions that Iran is accused of
taking but hasn’t been proven to have done, and not the full-scale destruction of the Iranian economy that the US has
embarked on in plain sight.

the US is somehow
responsible for Iran’s [alleged tanker attacks], a point made by…Trump critics. This kind of analysis is
leading to some bizarre policy recommendations. Already, European diplomats are urging Trump to drop his
campaign of maximum pressure and adopt one of “maximum restraint.”

This is asking to be
blackmailed. And now that Iran is threatening to exceed the limits to uranium
enrichment it agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal, it’s more important than ever
to understand that restraint and dialogue will not bring Iran to heel.

For Lake,
Iranians are disobedient animals who the US should bring “to heel”—through
violence, a revolting prescription even when applied to actual misbehaving
animals. That the “2015 nuclear deal” is effectively null and void because the US tore it up is not the sort of
detail that troubles a war propagandist like Lake.

In the Washington
Post, Michael G. Vickers (6/21/19) argued that “the Trump administration should
respond to [the tanker episodes and Iran’s downing of the drone] with strikes
of its own on Iranian and Houthi air-defense assets, offensive missile systems
and Revolutionary Guard Corps bases,” on the grounds that “by reinforcing
deterrence, a short-duration US military operation may well help to prevent a
wider conflict with Iran.”

In effect, his
argument is that the best way to avoid a war with Iran is to have a war with
Iran, as well as ratcheting up the war on Yemen, as if the US and its
allies hadn’t done enough to Yemen already. What the US would be
“deter[ing]”—a word that appears four times in the article, including in its
headline—is Iran’s ability to interfere with the US capacity to spy on and bomb
the country: Vickers called for bombing “air-defense assets,” giving away that
his concern is with making Iran incapable, not merely of carrying out
hypothetical and extremely unlikely offensive attacks, but of exercising its
right to defend itself.

At no point does
Vickers, or the Associated Press story on the downing of the
drone, or the Times report (6/20/19) saying Trump approved and then called off
bombing Iran over the drone incident, or any corporate media article I can
find, question the assumption underlying the US government and much of the
media’s fulminating over Iran shooting down the drone: If the drone was shot
down in international airspace rather than over Iranian territory—and by no
means has this been proven—it’s an outrage for Iran to interfere with the US’s
divine right to spy on any nation it pleases, at any time and to any degree that
it wishes. Even if the US is telling the truth, its claim is that it was 21 miles off the Iranian coast with a drone that has “powerful surveillance
sensors to monitor ground or maritime activity in great detail.” It’s all but
impossible to imagine a scenario in which US media take for granted Iran’s
right to deploy powerful spy equipment 21 miles off the US coast. (That’s less
than the distance from Dallas to Ft. Worth, or from Tampa to St. Petersburg.)

And treating arguments for bombing countries like those from Lake,
Stephens and Vickers as though they are merely interesting ideas worthy of
consideration—rather than calls to carry out war crimes—normalizes imperialist
aggression. If the public is told that starting wars against other countries
with no credible pretext is a reasonable action, the likely outcome is that
ever more people will become inoculated against efforts to try to stop
potential and ongoing slaughters.

USA
Today (6/17/19)
describes Iran as planning to “break” an agreement that the US has already
renounced.

Quick
question: Does the US ever break, breach or violate its international
agreements?

Apparently
not, according to US coverage of Iran’s recent announcement that it intended to
go beyond the limits of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in enriching uranium for its
civilian nuclear program (frequentlymischaracterized as
a nuclear weapons program in media coverage). Reading corporate media’s
inversion of reality, it’s hard to escape the impression that while Iran
betrays its international agreements, the US just leaves them behind.

An Associated
Press report carried by USA Today (6/17/19) was
headlined: “Iran Says It Will Break Uranium Stockpile Limit in 10 Days,” and
reported that Iran’s announcement indicated its “determination to break from
the landmark 2015 accord,” while noting that “tensions have spiked between Iran
and the United States,” partly because the US “unilaterally withdrew” from the
landmark agreement. Note that the US rejection of its obligations under the
deal is referred to in neutral terms—Washington “withdrew”—while Iran’s
response to US nonobservance gets negatively characterized as a “break”—a
pattern that persists throughout the coverage.

There
was no indication in the AP piece that Iran offered conditions
under which it would continue to comply with the Iran Deal (formally known as
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which gives the false impression that
Iran’s decision to end compliance with the JCPOA is settled and unconditional.

The Wall
Street Journal (6/17/19)
reports Iran will “breach” a pact that the US scuttled more than a year ago.

The Wall
Street Journal (6/17/19)
offered the same kind of misleading headline: “Iran to Breach Limits of Nuclear
Pact, as US to Send More Troops to the Middle East.” Again, Iran’s potential
departure from the pact whose terms the US has vitiated is portrayed as a
“breach,” while the US’s actual violation of the deal is labeled a “pullout” in
the accompanying piece.

The Journal,
unlike the AP, did note that Iran offered conditions under which it
would continue to comply with the JCPOA’s terms:

The
spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that by
June 27—10 days from Monday—the country would surpass its enriched-uranium
limits. He said Iran would further increase its production in early July, but
could reverse both steps if Europe provided relief from [US] sanctions.

CNN (6/17/19) went
with “Iran says it will break the uranium stockpile limit agreed under nuclear
deal in 10 days,” as their headline. Only people who read past the headline,
which most people don’t,
would’ve known that that’s not really what Iran is saying:

Iran
has reiterated that it could reverse the new measures should the remaining
European signatories in the nuclear deal (France, Germany and the United
Kingdom) step in and make more of an effort to circumvent US sanctions.

To
its credit, CNN added “withdraw” in addition to the usual “violate,”
“break” and “breach” in its list of words to describe Iran’s potential
departure compared with just “withdrew” to describe the US’s actions.

The New York Post (6/17/19)
chose “Iran Will Violate Nuclear Deal, Boost Uranium Stockpile” as the headline
to mislead readers, and kept with the pattern of describing the US’s JCPOA
breach as “pulling out of the deal.” However, unlike other reports, it didn’t
feature any sources skeptical of Iran’s responsibility for the recent Gulf of
Oman attacks on Japanese and Norwegian commercial oil tankers, despite crew
members aboard the Japanese Kokuka Courageous contradicting US allegations of
an Iranian mine attack by claiming to have been hit by a “flying object ,”
and European officials calling for further investigation

III.GENERAL
CRITICISM OF THE US WAR ON IRAN

DESPITE THE
BIASED REPORTING, MANY US CITIZENS SEE THE TRUTH AND DEMAND AN END TO US
AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAN

Contents

LTE from ARKie Reg Edwards

Veterans Against War
Petition to Congress

Essay Against Sanctions by
Dan Cohen

History of Iran, the 1950s
by Heather Gray

LTE
from Arkansas: Leave Iranians alone

Firstly: Iran is surrounded by nations with
nuclear weapons--Russia, Pakistan, Israel, and the U.S. fleet in the Strait of
Hormuz. So who are we to say they shouldn't have their own nuclear weapons?

Secondly: What would we say if the Iranians
had aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico? Or possibly Long Island Sound? It
wasn't many years ago that a U.S. cruiser in the Strait of Hormuz shot down an
Iranian civilian airliner and killed all 200-plus people on board. Just who do
we think we are?

Seriously, folks, if an Iranian cruiser 100
miles off the American shore shot down a U.S. passenger aircraft and killed
everyone on board, what would we think of that? If the Iranian fleet was in the
Gulf of Mexico, what would we think of that? What would we do if Iranian drones
were flying close to our shore, spying on us--what would we do?

Time to stop our threats and bring the
military home. Why don't we try leaving the Iranians alone and stop bullying
them?

REG EDWARDS, Compton

NADG, 06/22/2019

ABOUT FACE: VETERANS AGAINST WAR, 7-19-19

Dear Dick,

You and I both know that Iraq
war architect John Bolton has been agitating for a war with Iran ever since
he was appointed as National Security Advisor (and really decades before
that). We also know that the Trump administration got the ball rolling when
they pulled out of the Iran deal last year. The good news is that the House
just managed to pass an amendment that makes it so the President has to get
a seal of approval from Congress before he makes any moves to war with Iran
-- and now it's going to the Senate.

This is progress, but we aren't
out of the woods yet. It's critical that we step up the pressure on
Congress and not let them get complacent.

You may have seen today that an
Iranian drone was shot down by the Navy, increasing tensions in what has
already been a tension-filled moment. As the US military runs operations
off of Iran's coastline, the very real possibility exists that something
worse could happen. We need every Congress member to know that their
constituents stand unequivocally against war with Iran.

That's why we have joined the
National Iranian American Council and the Daily Kos to demand Congress take
the right measures to prevent war with Iran. We are asking you to do the
same:

Thank you for doing what you can
to make sure another war is not an option for this administration. As more
ways for you take action come up, we will let you know.

In solidarity,

Matt Howard
Co-Director
About Face: Veterans Against the War
(formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War)

AGAINST SANCTIONS

Starvation
sanctions kill people. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly already died as a result of
this administration’s relentless assault on their economy; those human beings
are no less dead than they would have been if the US had killed them by
dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these deaths have received virtually no
mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily, have had
very little to say about Trump’s attacks on the nation’s economy. The economy
which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their
sick.

I’m titling this essay
“Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare”, and I mean it. I am
not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt
military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall
effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because
they deliberately target civilians.

If the US were to launch
a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian
suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there’d be international outrage and
the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major hit.
Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime. Yet
America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same
deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer
essentially no consequences at all. There’s no public or international pressure
holding that form of violence at bay, because it’s invisible and poorly understood.

It reminds me of the way
financial abuse gets overlooked and under-appreciated in our society. Financial
abuse can be more painful and imprisoning than physical or psychological abuse
(and I speak from experience), especially if you have children, yet you don’t
generally see movies and TV shows getting made about it. In a society where
people have been made to depend on money for survival, limiting or cutting off
their access to it is the same as any other violent attack upon their personal
sovereignty, and can easily be just as destructive. But as a society we haven’t
yet learned to see and understand this violence, so it doesn’t attract interest
and attention. That lack of interest and attention enables the empire to launch
deadly campaigns targeting civilian populations unnoticed, without any public
accountability.

Note: The US just celebrated the 4th of July when, in the
late 1700's, Americans fought a battle to end the British colonial rule
of America. One might assume that Americans would, in turn, respect the
desire of others to also acquire independence and establish
democratically elected governments. This assumption of the US
respecting the desire of others for independence appears not to be
accurate, particularly if the American leaders and their corporate
sponsors desire access to valuable raw materials in designated areas
such as in, for example, Iran, the Congo, and Chile, etc. Along
this line, this article below is
about Iran and what happened, in the 1950s, when the US overturned the
first democratically elected Iranian government and the US desire for
oil and/or to also protect Britain's oil interests.

It appears that
many governments, over the years, have also appreciated the Roosevelt
New Deal model and wanted similar policies to assist the masses of
their people. This American model seemed to be desired in Iran in the
1950s under the first Iranian democratically elected
leader, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Mosaddeq wanted to
advance opportunities for the Iranian masses by, not unreasonably,
using revenues from Iranian based oil that was essentially under
British control.

In 2015, I sent
out the article below about the history of the US overturning the
Iranian government in the 1950's. Given that Iran is yet again in the
news, knowing this history of the CIA orchestrated coup in Iran, after
WWII, is incredibly important as the consequences have been relevant to
the dynamics in the Middle East ever since. This was the also first
time the CIA had dismantled a government.

I need to also say that regarding the contemporary
relationship with Iran, notwithstanding President Trump's recent
debacle and confusion about it all, I was so appreciative of
President Obama's Nuclear Deal with Iran as a move toward peace in the
Middle East and the world. It was the first time a US President had
bravely gone against the directive of the Israeli government and AIPAC altogether:

First time in US history, an American president dares to
oppose the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC. The crisis deepening day by day
upon the Iran nuke deal between the US and its biggest ally in the
Middle East - Israel.

U.S. President Barack
Obama gave a strong message to the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel group that has been strongly opposing
the Iran nuclear deal, in his meeting this week at the White House with
the two executives of AIPAC. (Global Research)

Trump, however,
appears to be following the Israeli and AIPAC directive regarding Iran
and virtually every other policy in the Middle East. By Trump also
taking the US out of the important Obama Iran Nuclear Deal he has made
the Middle East all the more vulnerable to violence.

The Trump
policies echo back to the 1950s when the US decided that Iran, or
virtually any other country, could not determine its own fate,
particularly when it involved the desire on the part of the US to
access raw materials, such as oil, that Americans and other countries
might desire.

Also, on Monday,
July 15 from 6-8PM, on WRFG-FM (Atlanta), we will produce a 2-hour
special program about the United States and its dangerous policies
regarding Iran.

******* [I urge you read the entirety of this learned
articles, as an essential preparation for understanding the present
conflict. –Dick]

Summary

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, there has been
a wide range of sanctions against Iran imposed by the United States,
the United Nations and the European Union. Click herefor a summary of the sanctions.

Both the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini were
not democratically elected as was Mosaddeq. It is rather mind boggling
to speculate as to what might have happened had the U.S. not overturned
the Iranian government in 1953 and instead had assisted the Iranians in
having control over their own oil resource and respected the democratic
process in Iran by adhering to the Atlantic Charter and Principle
Three's concept of "self-determination". Nevertheless, the
Iranians have suffered from isolation and economic sanctions from the
west largely because some sectors decided to take the situation into
their own hands rather than serving the dictates of the United States
or the West overall. As Noam Chomsky notes:

"Why the
assault against Iran? ....In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate
act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and
supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.
That conflicts with the Mafia doctrine, by which the world is pretty
much ruled. Credibility must be maintained. The godfather cannot permit
independence and successful defiance, as in the case of Cuba. So, Iran
has to be punished for that." (Democracy Now)

Hopefully with
the recent acceptance of the agreement with the Iranians in the U.S.
Senate and the possible projected lifting of the sanctions against
Iran, opportunities for the Iranians might again be in the offing. It
is an exciting prospect.

Conclusion

What had begun,
in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt as "an example of what we
could do by an unselfish foreign policy" ended in ignominy that
continues to this day.... the feelings and aspirations that were
enshrined in the Iran Declaration seem a world away today." (ademocraticiran)

The unfortunate lesson of it all was that the United States sent a
message to the Middle East and to the world at large, that the United
States was not interested in democratic systems and processes. As
Stephen Kinzer noted:

"When we overthrew a democratic government in Iran,
....we sent a message, not only to Iran, but throughout the entire
Middle East. That message was that the United States does not support
democratic governments and the United States prefers strong-man rule
that will guarantee us access to oil. And that pushed an entire
generation of leaders in the Middle East away from democracy. We sent
the opposite message that we should have sent. Instead of sending the
message that we wanted democracy, we sent a message that we wanted
dictatorship in the Middle East, and a lot of people in the Middle East
got that message very clearly and that helped to lead to the political
trouble we face there today." (Democracy Now)

Further, it appears that the principles of the 1941
Atlantic Charter are not something the United States and Europe are
willing to adhere to particularly if it regards threats of access to
capital, control of labor and control of raw materials, such as oil
and/or access to seeds and control of seeds in the agricultural sector
and many other examples.

The disruptive
Republican members of the House of Representatives in their opposition
to the Iranian agreement are yet again arrogantly displaying their
disdain for a semblance of justice and respect for the other. Nor are
they adhering to Roosevelt's directive of "what we could do by
an unselfish foreign policy" and/or the possibility of
dialogue and negotiation. As they say in southern Africa, "A
luta continua" - the struggle continues!

Heather Gray is
the producer of "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering
local, regional, national and international news. She has been involved
in agriculture advocacy and communications for 25 years in the United
States and internationally. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be
reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net

These publications prepare us to resist
US malignant hostility toward Iran.If
you are short of time, I have put up front two brief essays and an easily read
book:Art’s column, Gray’s essay, and
Benjamin’s book.

Heather Gray 2018, Background:CIA Overthrow of Elected LeaderMosaddeq in 1953

Media Benjamin, Inside Iran (2018)

Ghamari, The Iranian Revolution

Porter, the Iranian Nuclear Program

Parsi, Obama and Iran Nuclear Deal

Tabatabai, Trump v. the Deal

The
Nation, May 21, Save the Deal

US ANTI-IRAN PROPAGANDA and MILITARY THREATENING CONTINUE in the NADG

Gore Vidal

Entekhabifard, Iranian POV

Satires by Dick Bennett

Iran is a
theocracy.Do we hear enough from US Christian
leaders regarding US treatment of Iran?Is the role of Israel and Zionism sufficiently reported in these
articles of April-July 2019.

Jesus said in Matthew, “Love
your enemies, do good to those who hate you…” He proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”Readers, ask your minister to speak out
against the violence of your president.